Emotiva not so good

I've not heard anything in a few years from Emotiva.

The issue for me, was it sounded exactly like the Onkyo.  I was comparing to a much older Theta Casanova, which was not only more musical, but the 5.1 presentation totally blew away the Emotiva in terms of believability and effortlessness.

The Emotiva was a very clean, very quiet, very antisepctic presentation, and just.... felt constrained.  Like my amps were much smaller suddenly.

I haven't heard anything more recent, but the Anthem I'm using for HT right now is just so much better than that. If you can listen to Anthem and Emotiva and like them both, pick the cheap one. :)

Best,

E

There is a local person who writes reviews for one of the more well known mags, he replaced all of his Parasound gear with Emotiva and swears by it.  His focus is more on home theater, but he has a really nice system.  I haven't heard it, but he's done some meetups and there seemed to be a lot of oohs and aahs.

I have owned a couple of their monoblocks, which powered two of my surround sound speakers for a while.  I have an XPA-5 in my bedroom surround system.  It has held up well.

I haven't used them for critical two channel listening, and wouldn't at this point in my journey in the hobby, but they might be OK for someone putting together a beginner system or for home theater.

Never heard their amps. Their HT processor was a real disappointment.

XDA-1 dac, XPA amp, ERC-1 cd player.  After that I gave up on Emotiva.  The XDA-1 was bested by a $150 dac from Schiit.

Examples you encountered?